More people in Cambridge are starting to carry knives as a response to more drug dealers on the city’s streets, police said.

Speaking at Cambridge City Council’s north area committee, Inspector Paul Rogerson of Cambridgeshire constabulary said dealers from London were exploiting young people to sell drugs in Cambridge. Insp Rogerson said that, because of the success in tackling “cuckooing” operations based out of houses in the city, dealers were now dealing on the streets instead, prompting people to fear for their safety.

Insp Rogerson said: “We had had a problem with cuckooing, where an address is taken over by gangs and used as a base for operations. We were becoming quite good at disrupting that. But they changed their business model and moved to a more street-based approach.

“The worrying thing we are seeing with that is they are recruiting younger and younger people off the London lines.”

The committee heard that, because of the increasing problems with drug dealers on the street, police were finding more and more people are carrying knives in Cambridge.

“We are seeing an increase in knife carrying,” said Insp Rogerson. “They are not just drug dealers carrying knives, they are people in the community feeling they have to carry knives because of what is going on.”

Insp Rogerson said Cambridgeshire Constabulary had been working closely with the Metropolitan Police, and had also been working to tackle sex working in Cambridgeshire, which he said was “closely linked” with county line drug dealing.

Insp Rogerson said: “One worrying development for Cambridge is they are moving from only selling Class A to selling things like cannabis as well.”

Insp Rogerson said many young people experimented with cannabis, and that there was a prevailing movement in society towards seeing it as being more acceptable than other drugs.

Insp Rogerson said the problem is that, instead of buying cannabis from a friend or “someone in college” young people were now far more likely to find the person they were buying cannabis from is a county lines drug dealer which, he said, was potentially a far more dangerous encounter.

Councillors were urged to go back to their wards and have frank discussions with people in their communities about the dangers.

“It is a stark message for our communities. We need to make sure people know about the danger.”